It's In the Cards
by She's a Pistol
Summary: What if all Anime was real and the characters were actors? Our girl Teal meets Pegasus, the creator of Yu-Gi-Oh! and his family of characters who are also the YGO cast, and is welcomed as part of the family. Drama, romance, hilarity, and friendship ensue. AU. OC x many. Rating may change later.


Chapter 1

Teal looked out her bedroom window, the one facing the road. "Hm. Looks like the new people finally finished moving in. What a house! I'll bake something and bring it over. I want to meet the people who had the money to build that place!"

She skipped down the stairs and into the kitchen. "But first I'll need to do the dishes…this kitchen is disgusting!" Teal filled the sink and washed the drinking glasses, then threw in the plates, bowls, and silverware, and at last the pots and pans. The dishes hadn't been done in a week, and the food was crusted or moldy. Maggots were discovered in a bowl of baked beans, suppressed by a smaller bowl nestled in the larger bowl. Teal had to refill the sink with clean water four times, and the dishes took an hour there were so many. All of the dishes were out on the counter and dirty. Her family of six people had been using paper plates for three days because they were too lazy to wash the dishes.

Once the kitchen was clean, Teal brewed a pot of coffee for herself and began making a coffee cake. While it baked she sat down with her cup of coffee and a Martha Stewart magazine. Before it was ready to come out of the oven, Teal found a nice platter to put it on, and grabbed an unopened bag of a local coffee company's caramel latte flavored coffee and walked across the street with her treats. She rang the doorbell, not knowing what to expect.

While she waited a response, she looked to the left and right, her eye following down the length of the house. It seemed to be three stories tall, and from watching it being built she knew it only bordered the outside edge of the rectangular forty acre field, the middle left open as a huge courtyard of sorts. In front of the house, where she stood, the entrance was set back far enough to allow a circular driveway and a tunnel leading under a windowed sky walk into the courtyard where she assumed a garage was.

The man who opened the door had white hair down to his shoulders and brown eyes, wearing an elaborate red suit with ruffles and white shoes. Teal didn't know what to think, he was so stunning she only stared.

"Hello?" he said to her.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" she exclaimed, coming to her senses. "You just surprised me! I'm Teal Beckett, your neighbor from across the street. I made a coffee cake and brought you a pound of the local specialty coffee as a welcome-to-the-neighborhood gift."

"Oh! Why that was nice of you! Please, come in! Hey everyone, we have a guest!" he called into an intercom mounted on the wall. "I'm Pegasus Crawford." Pegasus stepped back and held the door for Teal to step inside.

She was welcomed with dual staircases on either side of the entrance that curved to the second-story walkway, suspended across the entrance joining the west and east wings. The foyer opened to the left and right and the high vaulted ceiling was made of nothing but glass. A large window stretched from the first floor to meet the ceiling, shedding light across the walkway and into the entire room. The set up reminded her of the Foxworthy mansion in the movie _Flowers in the Attic_. She gasped in awe and looked around as about a dozen people arrived at the front entrance.

"Is this who you called us here for, Pegasus?" a boy with odd spiky black and red hair with blond bangs asked. Who looked to be his taller, thinner twin stared at Teal with serious crimson eyes.

"Yugi," Pegasus said to the boy who asked, "and everyone, this is Teal. She lives across the road and made us a cake and brought coffee. Let's move to the kitchen."

"I didn't know there were so many people here! I would have made more cake!" Teal laughed. Pegasus laughed too.

"It's alright. It's the gesture that counts."

The kitchen, like the rest of the house, was massive and open to a room running parallel to it was the dining room. The only thing dividing the kitchen from the dining space was a counter bar. Everyone came up and introduced themselves to Teal as a girl named Anzu made coffee and a boy named Bakura pulled out more cakes and other treats from various places and served them.

"My, my, this is our new neighbor? I'm quite pleased to meet you. Seto Kaiba," said one very attractive boy who looked about 18.

"Seto, I don't think you should scare her away with your lechery until we all get to meet her," a boy with long white hair said lightly. "I'm Ryou. I'm Bakura's twin, if you can't tell from our physical similarities." They did look a lot alike, only Bakura's eyes were sharper and his hair quite a bit more unruly and his voice more hoarse.

By the time everyone had finished eating and cleaning up, Teal was invited to lounge around with a smaller group of the mass including Yugi, Yami, Bakura, Ryou, Anzu, Kaiba, and Pegasus.

"Teal," Pegasus drew her attention from a game of Old Maid that was getting more heated each turn that went by. "What do you want to do when you get out of high school?"

"Um, I kind of wanted to go to UW Madison for Human Biology to be a dietician."

"Have you ever considered acting?" This made her think.

"Not really, I mean, I've never really had a chance to act at all, and it's not something that ever struck me that I'd have a particular talent in."

"Well how would you like to audition for a part in the show I'm producing? It's called Yu Gi Oh. It's about a card game that has roots in Egypt. I'll go into further explanation if you're interested."

"Really? You think I could make it?" she asked incredulously.

"Of course. I'm thinking you'd play the part of the girl who travels to Japan specifically to compete in my dueling tournament excellently. And I didn't want to put her name in the script until I had her. So you'd be playing yourself, essentially."

"Oh that would be fine, but you're saying it like I've already been accepted."

"Well, I do have an _eye_ for these things," Pegasus quipped, and roaring laughter erupted from the other members of the household. Teal just tilted her head in confusion.

"It was a pun referring to our show. I'll explain if we carry on to the sitting room." He stood up and gave Teal his hand, and led her to another room upstairs in the southwest tower, a large, sunny room that was like a library, with shelves upon shelves lining the walls holding incredulous volumes of print. Teal's heart raced as she looked on at those books, reading and writing were passions of hers.

"Are you okay? Here, take a seat." He pulled a chair up to a small table and allowed her to sit in it before taking a seat across from her. Serenity brought a tray of tea to them and set the service on the table and left, leaving the couple alone. Pegasus explained the show Yu-Gi-Oh! to her and when he was finished, asked her what she thought.

"I would love to perform as Teal, Pegasus." She emitted a small laugh. "But why did you cast yourself as an evil man?" He smiled.

"It's simply because I wanted to perform myself but didn't want an overly long part. I want to direct it mostly, so I decided a small part would do. And my part isn't really evil, he's simply selfish. He's doing these things to collect the Millenium Items like his eye to combine their power to bring back his deceased wife, Cecelia."

"Who plays the part of Cecelia?" Teal asked. "I bet she's beautiful to play opposite you." And realizing what she obviously did not mean to say out loud, she blushed. Pegasus smiled softly, his eyes glowing.

"If you had been a mite older, you would have the part. Unfortunately, you still have that youthful appeal in your face and being. So I asked Mai." He was genuinely regretful. "I know you're going to develop into a real heart-stopper…" Teal thought this conversation was revealing and a little inappropriate, so she decided to change the subject.

"What about school?" she asked, giving him a moment to recover from his thoughts and was surprised when he didn't miss a beat. Maybe he really was an actor. The thought unnerved her.

"I would like everyone to attend public school while the season gets drafted. What school would you recommend?"

"Well, I go to Zadar, a K-12 school with a population of about six hundred students. I think it's the best school in the county. Each high school class size is about 50 but the classroom size is broken up into about 20 to 25 and the teachers really care about the students, even the at-risk ones."

"Okay. That is where I will get everyone enrolled then." A thought suddenly occurred to Teal.

"Pegasus? Can I ask you something?" He nodded. "Where are their parents?"

"The other kids? They're all orphans. I adopted them all."

Teal stared wide-eyed at him while she digested this information. "So, they're all like siblings?"

"In a way. Not by blood, and I adopted them all rather late in their lives. They were looked over because of their ages. They're from all over the country. Most had siblings, or in Yugi and Yami's case, twins.  
Bakura and Ryou are also twins. Joey and Serenity are brother and sister, and Seto and Mokuba are brothers. I couldn't adopt one and leave the other, so my family grew. However, they all know they're only siblings legally. They can date each other if they would like, but it's unlikely to happen."

"Wow. You're very generous." Teal was almost overcome with the thought that Pegasus took in all these kids. "How old are you?"

"Twenty-four." Now Teal was just outright shocked. He laughed. "I was born into a very wealthy family. Have you heard of Crawford Petroleum?"

"No way!"

He nodded. "My kids are only a few years younger than me, but I still take care of all of them but they see me as a brother guardian more than a father one." They chatted for a while longer, then they were called to dinner. Pegasus invited her to stay, she was "One of the family now!" as he trilled.

She accepted and they made their way to the dining room. Teal was still a little shy around her new friends, but they persisted in getting her to open up a little. They were used to welcoming strangers in their family, as they had all been adopted at different times.

Teal thought the food was wonderful. Small portions served in a true gourmet fashion, she enjoyed a mozzarella tomato basil salad and a filet mignon stuffed with gorgonzola and seared rare. Pegasus revealed he had often hired specialists in different skills to live with them long enough to train all the kids. They rotated dinner so each team of kids, with two to a team, had a different night of the week to make it for everyone. They were involved with the meal planning and grocery shopping (Pegasus used a grocery delivery service or a CSA if they couldn't get to a farmer's market) but for breakfast and lunch it was usually every man for themselves as they had varied schedules.

Teal couldn't believe her luck and congratulated herself on actually coming over and introducing herself. Within hours her life had changed. She suddenly realized how late it was, and announced she'd have to leave after desert. There was a chorus of "awwww"s, but she insisted.

"You can't spend the night?" Joey asked. "We have plenty of room! You haven't even seen the whole place! We haven't done a tour!"

"Yeah, can you call your parents and ask? You can borrow a change of my pajamas if you don't want to go and grab yours. We look like the same size," Serenity added. Pegasus looked thrilled.

"Yes, please call them, Teal. Here, use my phone." He handed her his iPhone. Teal smiled and relented.

Another hour found her in the den with everyone, wearing Serenity's pajamas and laying on her stomach on a huge cushion watching a movie that hadn't been released yet. Seto lay on one side of her and Yami on the other. Mokuba was laying on her back, fast asleep. She felt like she belonged with them more than her own family, and knew this was only the beginning of her life's adventure.


End file.
